Burgas Municipality - official website

Festival of sand sculptures

Information for artists to build sculptures of sand there from the time of the ancient Egyptians. Nowadays, it has gained immense popularity with the hundreds of events held worldwide. Over the years become masters skill and works at their place even in the book of the Guinness Records, and many promotional catalogs collecting people from various corners of the world.

The first ever Festival of sand sculptures in Bulgaria was held in the month of July 2008 in Burgas. It made world-famous artists from Indonesia, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria.

Area of five decares on the territory of Bourgas Park Lake in the Sea Garden in early July did castles, towers, all marine (and not only) people, mermaids, pirates and other Charming creatures, some of them high above 8 meters. Interesting models to be used about 2500 tons a special, sustained rain of sand.

Special night lighting and security complemented the unique charm of the city of sand. For two months of its existence, the first festival of sand sculptures in Burgas attracted over 15 000 visitors.

More information on the site of the festival: http://www.burgasandfest.com/

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Sand Fairytale Tree Grows by the Coast of Burgas

For a second time the Municipality of Burgas organizes the one of its kind Sand Sculptures Festival in Bulgaria. The place of the exhibition is the same as last year’s – near “Park” hotel at the Sea Garden.

This year a 8.5 m long fairytale tree will rise amid the sand town. There will be a nest on its top with two storks - symbol for happiness and hope not only for Bulgarians. The central composition will be sculptured together by all the participant artists in the festival. They are 18 and come from Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Netherlands, USA, Portugal and Bulgaria. The Bulgarian group includes three artists – Atanas Stoyanov, Lyubo Kotsev and Dobrin Vatev. They contribute to the realization to one of the main objectives of the festival – development of Bulgarian sand sculpture school.   

Citizens and guests of Burgas will have the opportunity to see 28 sculptures, some of which are composed of several figures. 

They are arranged in spiral form and the whole composition represents a sun-dial. Thus during the daytime the shadow of the tree will point one after another the surrounding sculptures. 

This year the sand used for the sculptures weights 3300 tonnes, which is 800 more than the previous. Some of the sculptures have already been completed. The invited authors have already unleashed their creativity and started to turn piles of sand into various mythical and fairytale creatures and also characters of modern pop culture. Visitors of the festival will have the chance to see and take a picture with Romeo and Juliette, characters from “Star Wars”, “Shreck”, “Ice Age”. 

The second edition of the festival will be opened on July 2nd by the disco legends Boney M, who will have a concert in Burgas on the same date. Tickets’ prices are: BGN 1 for children and BGN 3 for adults. Travel agencies have already stated their interest to include the exhibition in their services and it is expected that attendance will be high. For tourists’ convenience on the festival’s territory there will be a separate area for children, where they will  make their own sand  figures. There will be also souvenir stands and shops for drinks.

Sand sculptures festival will last till the middle of September.